


Lie, Conceit, Deceit

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: Lies, Misdirection, and Terrible Truth [2]
Category: Mythology - Fandom, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: GFY, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 11:56:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Beauty is a lie." Anat's eyes dance with amusement. "A conceit, a deceit. As much as any lie you've ever told, my trickster friend."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lie, Conceit, Deceit

He wakes to a hand furnace-hot on his shoulder, that melted into nothing as it was pulled away, indistinct once more while his mind swirled with indecision as to form. Only Anat's eyes remain clear, even though undecided in color. Beautiful, frightful truth that makes him smile. He had to know intimately the difference between truth and lie to make his lies the more believable, and yet there is one lie he'd not questioned before.

"You have changed." Her voice is a reminder of desert nights around an oasis, nights he's never truly seen, but can imagine well enough.

"I don't see you as clearly." Loki pauses, then adds, "Or perhaps more clearly. What do you see in the mirror?"

"You no longer see the lie you believed. I wondered why a trickster did not see past the lie, particularly one who is called Lie-Smith." She settles into a chair that's been brought into the room he's been given as his own, watching him still with unsettling eyes. "But you don't let yourself see the truth, either."

"Yours isn't a lie I have to tell." Loki shifts his weight, pushing himself into a sitting position. Leaning against the headboard as he watches Anat with a wary gaze.

"Beauty is a lie." Anat's eyes dance with amusement. "A conceit, a deceit. As much as any lie you've ever told, my trickster friend."

"Truth is a terrible beauty."

"Terrible, yes. Frightening and aweful to those who do not care to see it." Loki thinks she shrugs, but her form is too indistinct for him to tell. "I do not think it so beautiful, though. A perception that perhaps you do not share, that lies so easily and neglects to reveal all of the truth even when you share a part of it."

"The best lies are the truth." Loki knows this as intimately as he does the rules he breaks, and the webs of lies and misdirection he weaves. He narrows his eyes, watching her shrewdly. There's a sense of a smile, and he focuses on her face, reminding himself she must have a true form for him to see, past the magic that constantly shrouds her. It's an intricate web of lies fit for a trickster, an illusion he ought to have seen through before, and still isn't quite sure why he hadn't - and still cannot.

"And the most dangerous are the ones we tell ourselves, and forget are lies." There's a sadness there, and Loki tilts his head. Anat has never spoken a lie to him, even one she believes, but she has never needed to speak the lie. The lie is hidden in the stories that mortals tell, the stories that other gods hear almost before they meet, particularly when they are so divided in their usual contact points in Midgard as Asgard and her own Saphon.

Stories that would fuel subconscious expectations, something even Loki cannot entirely banish from his psyche. Leaving him seeing what he wanted to see, perhaps even now.


End file.
